Murder at the PTA (2010) bk-1

by Laura Alden

  “That is not right.” Paoze put the lock back into the bin. “I cannot take this gift.”

  “You can’t walk back and forth from Madison, and the bus schedule doesn’t fit store hours. If you don’t have a bike, you’ll have to quit, and I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Mrs. Kennedy, I cannot.”

  Stubborn kid. “Then think of it as a loan. If you get your bike back, you can return this.”

  “A loan?” He looked at the bike. It was tricked out with more gears than anyone living five hundred miles from a mountain range needed. It also had a fancy computer that gave mileage, speed, elapsed time, and the time of day in Guam, for all I knew.

  I saw him weakening, and I pressed the advantage. “A loan. If you decide you want to buy it, I can deduct something from your paychecks.”

  “Deduct.” He stroked the handlebars with his index finger.

  “Sure. We can agree on a price and I’ll divide it by, say, twenty-six, and subtract that amount out of every paycheck.” I watched him eye the gears. “But it’s an old bike”—all of four years old—“and it hasn’t been maintained at all the last year, so I can cut you a pretty good deal.”

  A bolt of lightning cracked, and we both jumped. Automatically, I counted seconds. At four seconds a crash of thunder came, loud enough to rattle the glass in the garage window. The storm was close.

  “Let’s get that bike in the car.” I made a come-along gesture and walked out into a strong wind. “The front wheel is quick release. Let me show you.”

  Paoze clutched the handlebars tight. “Thank you, Mrs. Kennedy, but I can ride now. Thank you for the bicycle. I will—”

  “You’ll put that bike in the car right now, is what you’ll do. Look at that sky. I wouldn’t put a dog out on a night like this.” Paoze looked at the dark clouds, masses of fast-moving black and gray. A fat drop of rain splattered on the driveway. “Hurry.” I opened the car door and popped the trunk. “You don’t want your new bike getting wet, do you?”

  Rain pelted the windshield as we drove through the streets of Madison. The windshield wipers, even on high speed, weren’t keeping up with Mother Nature. I stayed off the busiest streets and tried to keep away from puddles and overflowing catch basins.

  Paoze gave directions, almost shouting in order to be heard over the rain. “Please turn left. My street is there.”

  I flipped on the turn signal and started down a street I’d never noticed before. The houses grew smaller and dingier. Peeling paint was ubiquitous, plywood covered random windows, and the tiny front yards were nothing but beaten earth.

  “Here.” Paoze indicated a miserable-looking house. The roof was a shingle patchwork, not a single window was intact, and the spalling concrete front porch looked downright dangerous.

  I didn’t want to look, yet I couldn’t look away. Paoze, the ever-helpful, always clean-cut young man, lived here? Appalled didn’t come close to what I was feeling. But what could I say? The kid was on tuition scholarship, but he had to come up with room and board. From what little he’d said about his parents, they were having a hard enough time paying their own bills, forget having anything left over for their son. If Paoze was paying rent and buying groceries solely on the paychecks I was signing, he must be eating a lot of macaroni and cheese.

  He opened his door. “Thank you very much for the ride, Mrs. Kennedy. I will borrow the bicycle this time and consider purchasing.” And he was gone into the rain.

  I popped open the trunk and felt the car move as he lifted out the bike. He shut the trunk lid and moved through the rain, carrying the bike’s loose front tire with one hand and hanging on to the handlebars with the other. Through the curtains of sweeping rain, I watched him reinstall the front tire, unlock the front door, and wheel the bike inside. The glimpse I got of the interior stairway was of stained carpet, warped paneling, and a bare bulb sticking out of the ceiling. Without even knowing, I could smell the mold, the cigarettes, and the greasy odor of old cooking.

  The door shut. He hadn’t even waved good-bye.

  I was halfway home when my cell phone rang. “Oh, hi, Beth. I didn’t expect you to answer.” The woman giggled. “I don’t know why, but I didn’t. Sometimes I have no idea why I do things.”

  Pointless conversations give me headaches. I’d pulled over to the curb when the phone rang, and now I tapped the steering wheel as red taillights went wetly past. Conversations like this also brought out the worst in me.

  “This is Beth Kennedy,” I said. “To whom am I speaking, please?”

  “To whom?” she mimicked. “Never knew anyone to say ‘whom’ other than youm.” She giggled again. “This is Claudia. Claudia Wolff in case you know more than one Claudia.”

  “Hi, Claudia. What can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me you haven’t heard about the break-in at Tarver. Did you know? Someone smashed half the windows in the school. Sprayed graffiti all over and stole a bunch of computers.”

  This was why I didn’t care for gossip. Almost everything she’d said was wrong. “I talked to Gus about it earlier today.”

  “Oh.” Her voice drooped, but it took her only a moment to perk back up again. “Well, anyway, that’s not why I called. Erica, our PTA president? She asked me to set up a memorial service for Agnes.”

  Ten bucks said a service was Claudia’s idea from the get-go, and Erica had washed her hands of it by saying the project was all hers.

  “So I’m putting together a program,” she said, “and that takes hours and hours to do a nice job. But it’s for Agnes, so I want to do it right.”

  “Mmm.” I made a noncommittal noise. Claudia was one of those perennially underappreciated volunteers, according to Claudia. And, to be fair, she was probably right. She did a tremendous amount of PTA work, but it was hard to feel sorry for someone who spent a lot of time asking for people to feel sorry for her.

  “Listen to this,” she said. “None of Agnes’s family can make it tomorrow. Can you believe it? Six brothers and sisters and none of them is driving down!”

  “Mmm,” I said. Engaging her in conversation was like making eye contact with a large slobbery dog. You didn’t want to do it unless it was absolutely unavoidable. Either one could be a long, messy process.

  “So,” she said, “it only makes sense that everyone on the PTA committee says a few words. Service starts at two in the auditorium. Be there fifteen minutes early, okay? See you!”

  “No, wait. Claudia—” But she was gone. I pushed the buttons to call her back and got a busy signal. I tried again; still busy.

  I stared at the phone cross-eyed, making my headache worse. I didn’t want to speak at the memorial service. I didn’t even want to go, though I would because I was a Good Girl. But speaking? What on earth could I say that wouldn’t make me worry about lightning striking me dead? Maybe I’d get Marina to help. I considered the possibility for half a second, then rejected it completely. The cat would be better help than Marina.

  My phone rang again. “Beth? This is Gloria Kuri, Agnes’s sister.”

  “Hi, Gloria. Sorry you can’t make it down to the memorial service tomorrow. I’m sure there will be a good turnout.” I wasn’t sure at all, and for my own sake I was hoping for a small showing. Public speaking wasn’t my forte, and the smaller the crowd, the less my knees would be knocking.

  “Yeah, well.”

  I massaged the skin at the middle of my forehead. My siblings and I weren’t the closest, but if one of them died, I’d move heaven and earth to attend a service given in their honor. Clearly, Agnes’s family was even more messed up than mine.

  Gloria went on. “You know, I was wondering if you already went to Agnes’s house and cleaned out the fridge and stuff.”

  “Did it this morning.”

  “Oh.” There was a pause in which no profusion of thanks was forthcoming. “Then I wonder if I could ask you one more favor.”

  I could tell how this was going to go. Every week one sibling or other wou
ld remember that Agnes had something he or she wanted. Gloria would call me and I’d be asked to trot over to the house and hunt for an object I may or may not find, then box it up, and ship it north. The object would undoubtedly be ungodly heavy and cost me a fortune in postage, a fortune for which I’d get promises of repayment, but repayment would mysteriously never appear. “Well . . .”

  “I’m looking for a photo album,” Gloria said. “Agnes was the oldest daughter, so she got all the family photos when Momma died. Now I’m oldest, and I don’t want that album sitting in an empty house all winter. I’m sending you money ahead for the postage, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

  Shame heated my face. Misjudgment was my new middle name.

  “Sure,” I told Gloria. “I’ll stop by tomorrow before the service and get it in Monday’s mail.”

  We disconnected, and I wondered if I’d misjudged Claudia, too. Maybe I should stop judging altogether. Maybe I should assume that people’s intentions were honest and kind, and if their actions didn’t show that, well, then, there was some miscommunication—that was all.

  I’d almost convinced myself when I remembered the stricken expression on Paoze’s face after his bike had been stolen—and the scattered papers in Agnes’s office at Tarver and the stain on Agnes’s living room floor.

  My headache throbbed in time to the beat of the windshield wipers. Swish, swish, swish.

  To my right, dark figures hurried down the sidewalk, bending their heads against the rain. I watched them for a while—watched one particular large and lumbering figure for quite some time—then I put the transmission in drive, signaled, and when the road was clear, merged into the eastbound traffic.

  Without Marina at my side, Agnes’s house seemed darker than before. I turned on all the lights in the living room, but none of them penetrated the gloom. The scent of the stain remover Marina used had faded away, and the house already had the stale smell of abandonment.

  I strained to hear something—the ticking of a clock, the hum of a furnace, any noise at all—but the only sound was that of my own breathing. On this quiet postchurch Sunday noon, no noises penetrated from outside. There were no car doors shutting, no children’s voices calling. The owner of this house was dead, and the house was, too.

  “Stop that,” I said out loud. If I creeped myself out, I wouldn’t be in any shape to read what I’d prepared for the memorial service.

  I checked the living room end tables and looked through the entertainment center. No photo albums. Not even any photos.

  I bypassed the kitchen and headed down the carpeted hallway. In the soulless guest bedroom there were books on the shelves of one of the nightstands. Automatically, I glanced at the titles. Maybe nine out of ten women peeked into medicine cabinets; I did my peeking at bookshelves. Books said a lot about a person. Plus they were in plain sight, so there was no need to feel guilty about snooping.

  The collection included Little Women, hardcover, bound in a deep rich blue and inscribed “Agnes Heikkinen” on the inside cover in a young hand; seven Nancy Drews, paper dustcovers intact; The Little Colonel; a couple of dingy Bobbsey Twins books. I took down a copy of The Princess and the Goblin. Inscribed on the front flyleaf was “To Agnes, from her aunt Agnes, Christmas 1910.”

  From Agnes to Agnes, and then passed to our Agnes. A triple play. I slid the book back onto the shelf and was grateful that my family didn’t curse succeeding generations with increasingly inappropriate names. I’d have to thank my mother next time I talked to her—which might be before Christmas, or might not.

  Since the most likely place for the photo album was also the place it would take longest to search—the book-lined study—I took on Agnes’s bedroom next.

  I looked at the nightstand. The specifications for the school that had been Agnes’s last nighttime reading was thicker than the Chicagoland phone book. I flipped to the end and whistled—829 pages. Why on earth was Agnes reading this? It was something for builders to read: contractors, plumbers, electricians, but not school principals, for heaven’s sake.

  “This isn’t frying the eggs,” I told myself, quoting Marina. If I didn’t get a move on, I’d have to come back after the memorial service, when darkness was closing in.

  With sturdy resolve, I opened the dresser drawers. I pushed my hands through the stacks of clothing and felt around for any booklike shape. Nothing.

  I shut the last drawer with a bang and opened the bifold closet doors. A long line of gray, navy, and maroon suits marched down the clothes rod: an army of lifeless, flat Agneses. I shivered, hoping the image wouldn’t slide into tonight’s dreams.

  The shelf above the suits was crowded with hat boxes. Which was odd, because I couldn’t once remember seeing Agnes under a hat. I reached up and jiggled a box. The first box I tried with a pink faded chintz pattern was light. So was the next box, a red-and-white stripe. The next box was also light, and the next, and the next. None contained any photo albums, then.

  My body acted on its own volition, fast and with no thought. I grabbed the last box on the shelf and fumbled off the lid.

  It was a hat.

  So much for that mystery. I started to replace it, but stopped and took a closer look.

  The hat was a cloche, made in a rich maroon so dark it was almost black. A light netting was sewn onto the front brim, something else I hadn’t seen on a hat in years. I turned the hat upside down. FAYE’S MILLINERY, read the label. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. The name wasn’t familiar, but as I’d never bought a formal hat in my life, that wasn’t a huge surprise.

  What was a surprise was that Agnes owned expensive hats she never wore. She’d always struck me as one of those people who went through her closet once a year and got rid of anything not worn in the last twelve months. Yet if that was Agnes, why all these hats?

  I replaced the box and pushed aside the suits to check the closet floor.

  “Oh . . .”

  I backed up until I ran into the bed. I sat down fast. My vision clouded with a moisture that could only be tears.

  It was always the shoes.

  Shoes are worn year after year, collecting memories and miles and dirt from vacations and drops of paint from home-improvement projects. Shoes show how a life is lived. I’d packed away my grandmother’s dresses without a quiver, but when I’d picked up her shoes, I’d fallen apart. I looked at a pair of Agnes’s slippers, worn through at one toe, and wept.

  When the tears stopped, I wiped my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Agnes,” I whispered. “So very, very sorry.”

  I shut the closet door and went to the bathroom to rinse my face. The mirror showed red-rimmed eyes, but the color would fade by the time I had to stand in front of an auditorium full of people. My hair, however, had to be fixed. I dragged my fingers through the strands, which didn’t help matters at all. My purse with its resident comb and brush was in the car, so I whispered an apology to Agnes and opened the door of her medicine cabinet.

  I blinked. “Wow.”

  A veritable pharmacy had taken up residence inside—big brown bottles, little clear bottles, medium white bottles, and all sorts of sizes in between. I recognized some as herbal medications; some were vitamins; others were prescription. The prescription labels were from the Hunter Center, an office with which I wasn’t familiar. I didn’t recognize the medications, either. Agnes always prided herself on being healthy, and she had made a big ceremony out of awarding Tarver’s perfect attendance certificates. If she was so healthy, why was—

  Oh. My. I was peeking in Agnes’s medicine cabinet.

  I shut the door fast. There’d be time to fix my hair at the school. Using someone else’s comb was icky, anyway, and even worse if that someone was dead.

  I turned off the lights and scooted down the hall. The study, when I turned on all the lights, wasn’t as dismal as I’d remembered. In a dark and slightly claustrophobic way, it was almost cozy. I crouched down to look at the low-lying books—educational texts, books on economics and financia
l management. Next up was a shelf of architecture and construction books.

  I stood and looked through the next bookcase. History, biography,American history.The last two bookcases had shelves above and closed cabinets below. Inside, one shelf was empty, but the other held a few photo albums. I took down the leftmost one. Its thick burlap cover was promising, but the pages were the sticky cardboard layered with thin clear plastic. It was not the album Gloria wanted. The photos, judging from the clothing and hair-styles, were from the midseventies.

  Curiosity made me look closer. Instead of dour faces in formal portraits, I saw photos of a smiling Agnes. Her hair, past her shoulders with feathered bangs, was the same hairstyle she’d been wearing the last time I saw her.

  Except for the hair, Happy Agnes didn’t look anything like the Agnes I’d known. She was young and thin and, well, happy. Who, I wondered, had taken the photo? Who had inspired that shining joy? When I turned the page, I knew.

  Chapter 10

  I slipped into my reserved front-row seat. “Thought you were going to be late,” Erica said. Claudia stepped up to the podium and tapped the microphone with dark red fingernails.

  “Good afternoon,” she said somberly. “I’d like to start this memorial service for Agnes Mephisto by asking Pastor Calvin to lead us in prayer.” A black-robed pastor took the microphone. “Let us pray,” he said, and an auditorium full of people bowed their heads.

  I tried to pay attention, but Pastor Calvin was famous for his long-windedness, and it became clear that he hadn’t known Agnes at all. The third time he called her “our deeply beloved sister,” I tuned him out completely and took myself back to Agnes’s study. Once I’d recovered from my startling discovery, I’d found the family album quickly enough.

  Bound in cracking leather, the black pages were filled with sepia-toned photos stuck on with black adhesive corners. I saw horses and hayfields and ponies and women in long dresses. Most of the photos were labeled with names; some had names and dates. The album was a treasure, and I didn’t blame Gloria for wanting it closer at hand.